New Series coming: Superman Unchained! (nice title, DC...)

Sigh.

I wonder if DC even realizes that they're also publishing a comic of Django Unchained at the moment.  And that comic's title has a meaning to it that's a lot less steeped in DC's insecurities about their flagship character.

This, from an article at Newsarama:

"We're all fans and we've all known this character for a long time," Jim Lee tells USA Today. "You have to fight your natural tendency to do what you know or what you've always thought the character to be.

"We've been pushing the creators to not be beholden to the past conceits and understandings of Superman. So we will speak to a new generation of readers."

You can more or less read that as "we're really uncomfortable with Superman as a character who isn't as straightforward as Batman, and as guys who grew up thinking Batman rules and Superman drools, we're not sure what a Superman comic looks like, and we really aren't going to do any research to find out.  But we have a corporate imperative to make Superman work in the comics, so we're doing what everyone else has said they're doing since Mike Carlin left the editor's post."

I'm not sure the comic will be bad, necessarily, but the one drumbeat DC has had around Superman for at least 13 years has been "we think we know Superman, but we're going to try something new for a new group of readers".

At this point, the only thing left new to try is to actually go back to whatever that model was that they think Superman has been living by until the new writer (who has never read Superman before) took the paycheck. Only, the character hasn't had an opportunity for 13 years of comics to even have a status quo.  He's been rebooted five times in the past 8 years or so, and I think only writer Geoff Johns managed to get Clark Kent in a Daily Planet newsroom with Perry in more than one issue of his run.

Frankly, I'm tired of DC's shame of their own very lucrative bit of IP.  Nobody buying those t-shirts or stickers for their cars (all of which bring in way, way more than this comic ever will) are looking for a new, edgy Superman.  Dumping 75 years of the character doesn't automatically equate to speaking to ANYONE.  In fact, I'd argue that a lot of people would like to pick up a Superman comic and see what they're expecting as per Superman's status quo, not whatever the writer of the week and Jim Lee (no master storyteller, he) have as a way of reimagining the character.

DC, you are the disappointing sibling who we all think has the tools to get his life together, but who keeps somehow making bad decisions that he can only see as strokes of bad luck.  We're getting tired of bailing you out so you can keep the electricity on in the apartment you can't afford.

Your Questions Answered: Why do you hate Rutherford B. Hayes?

Anonymous asks:

Why do you hate Rutherford B. Hayes?

I actually tried to find a reason to hate Rutherford B. Hayes, but reading his bio, it's kind of hard to find much fault with the guy.  He inherited a tough spot in the wake of the panic of 1873 and managed to forge a new path for currency, worked to amicably end Reconstruction and restore full independence to the South, did good deeds in Latin America, took no BS from Mexican bandits and handled the railroad worker's strike with more humility than Reagan and the mess with the air traffic controllers.

The 1870's are a somewhat unsexy period in American history, so I had to look up quite a bit on Hayes, but in my estimation, aside from the extremely dicey way in which he took office, he seems all right.

So, the answer is: I DO NOT HATE RUTHERFORD B. HAYES

In fact, I find quite a bit to admire in his biography.

I'm not sure I'm ready to get on the Rutherford B. Hayes bandwagon, like you people, but as a man of his time, he seems pretty remarkable.  Unfortunately, he falls between Lincoln and Roosevelt, in that era of American history that just doesn't get much press.  I think that's all on me to better understand, and maybe that's worth doing sometime.

Your Questions Answered: 3D Printing

Marshall asks:

What do you think of 3-D printers? Are you excited? Do you have plans? Or do you think, "Oh, man I don't even...that's for kids of kids to enjoy but I ain't got time to worry about it."


What a fantastic and unexpected question.

In 1999 I was working in a multimedia/ video production office and we were helping produce a video for a faculty going for an NSF grant.  He was helping to develop a process that, at the time, was called "Solid Freeform Fabrication", I believe.  I stood there and watched the process happen (well, watched it on the monitor), and couldn't understand how this was happening, how it was possible.

It was an amazing technology, watching parts within parts rise from a sea of dust on the power of lasers and engineering.  It was like a special FX sequence but it was happening in front of me, just one of many terrific sci-fi as life moments that I experienced working in the College of Engineering (nuclear reactors, robots, super computers...  it was always something new and bizarre).  But I didn't really understand the implications until recent times when it seems that this technology will move out of corporate environments and could soon be consumer-grade stuff.

Like the distribution of media via electronic means or the coming change in education, I'm watching with bated breath.  Self-produced manufactured goods is the next game changer.  In fifteen years, kids will draw their ideas for toys into an app and print their own action figures.  We won't go to the store to buy certain or, perhaps, many items... we'll just buy the design online based on ratings and print up that thing at home.  We'll have access to things imagined by weird people who never wanted to be mechanical engineers, but they've had an idea and refined it and now it's just out there in the sea of ideas.  Maybe you'll buy a portable battery device to make it work.  It's the @#$%ing Diamond Age.

It's going to have us ready to similarly work with and feel comfortable with other technologies that enable us to generate and design technologies at home.  3D printing today, matter converters tomorrow.  Making iPhone Apps is going to seem like rubbing two sticks together for a spark.

I was extremely ecstatic until someone mentioned that guy who was putting designs online for making guns, and suddenly I got a lot less excited.  If you can print up a gun, what else are you going to print up?  A drone to fly that gun into my living room?

None of this means I think we need to control 3D printers or have some sort of government oversight on printing, but it dissolves the supply chain that could be interrupted to keep some items out of the hands of folks who wouldn't normally be licensed to have military assault weapons.  Between you and me, I don't want 13 year-olds printing up M-16s before their parents come home from work.

Let's them them print up nunchucks and shuriken, though, because every kid should have those.

So, yeah, stuff is going to get real complicated with this amazing new power we're giving ourselves.

For me...  well, I lack imagination.  I don't know what I'd print out immediately.  A lifesize bust of our own Randy?  A Theodore Roosevelt action/ adventure playset?  I don't know.

But as these things become accessible and better, I look forward to how it will create opportunity for artists, for inventors, engineers, scientists, kids... all of us, I guess.

Your Daily Dose of Good Cheer: Lynda Carter

Happy Birthday, KareBear

Today is my mother's birthday.

In her honor, here is Neil Diamond singing "America".  I welcome you to clap along slightly off beat with the song, knowing that, wherever she is, The KareBear will be doing the same.



and, because, it's her b-day, let us all enjoy the 1973 Hawaii performance of "Suspicious Minds" by King Elvis.



Dang, yo. There is nobody else like The King, is there?

Happy birthday, Ma!  We love you.

For Pope Benedict as he departs office

Apparently, in 2005, I welcomed Pope Benedict XVI to the job with this post...

So, so much has changed since 2005.

We lost Jackson, YouTube became a thing you could embed....

As Pope Ben leaves office, let's hear it one more time...



That's right, I've been blogging longer than a Pope's tenure in office.

Your Daily Dose of Good Cheer: Veronica Lake

Your Questions Answered: What's Up With All the Blogging?

Anonymous asks:

Why do you keep blogging after all these years? What keeps you going? Do you like the attention?


Wow, tough questions from the crowd.

At the end of this month, I will mark my ten year anniversary of my first blog post.  In internet time, that's an eon.

What started me then is not why I'm doing it now, if I can even recall why I did it then.  Truthfully, the original League of Melbotis blog was more or less about having a one-to-many communication tool for myself when I'd moved to a place where I was far from people I knew, and had nobody to talk to (aside from Jamie), and pestering people with email had gone about as far as it could go.

Back then, blogging hadn't really taken the shape it has now of routine columns on single topics.  It was closer to journaling, in my opinion, but the public forum-ness of blogging meant a push and pull of having an audience that just writing for and to yourself won't ever have.

But why am I still doing it?

There are a lot of reasons.

I do believe writing continually has improved my ability to think critically.

I think.

Maybe.

Blogging routinely does mean I apply some thought to media and how that media is produced when I act as a consumer.  If reading that pondering is useful for others (ie: you), well...  I'm happy for you guys!  But I did figure out years and years ago that this works best if I do this for myself first, and if its of benefit to other people, that's a very nice thing, but it can't be my primary concern.

I write with myself as my primary audience, assuming there are other The League's out there.

And, it turns out, there are other people out there who have found a reason to return, even if their own voices are very different.  I do feel some responsibility to the great folks I've met or not met, who show up online and stick with me.  That's an honor.

Your Questions Answered: Which Super Power?

CanadianSimon asks:

I know you've spent a lot of time thinking about this, all comic fans have, if you could have one super power what would it be? How would it be useful in the real world and what would the detriments be. Finally, do you think this absolute power would corrupt you?


For a long, long time I thought the power I'd want, and which I'd still want in a way, is: invulnerability

It sort of started with the idea, when I was living in a 14 story dorm, of getting tired of waiting for the elevator and thinking "man, if I could just pitch myself out the window and get up and walk away, I could save myself a lot of time."  Yes, it would be alarming to everyone on the ground, but those elevators took forever.

Then I began extrapolating all the other stuff I could do even without other standard super powers, like flight or super strength.

Flight would be very cool, but its got limited application.  It's basically a way of getting around that avoids traffic.  Strength is great, but without invulnerability, it seems like you'd be in constant danger putting that strength into practice.  What if you drop the bus on yourself?

But I think with invulnerability, you could actually be fairly useful.  If human frailty were removed, the opportunities seem limitless for ways in which it could be applied, from deep sea explorer to space walker to fireman.  And, if you don't need to worry about getting dinged up, you can also get a rocket pack or whatever, and flight can be an option.

The trick, of course, is that you'd lose empathy for other people who did bleed, and who had to worry about the basics of an existence where harm would end you.  I don't know what it might mean for longevity if your physical shell was impervious to damage, so the problems of remaining healthy and whole while time marches on for everyone else could really take a mental toll.  And, of course, using the power for means that served a benefit to the most people and not just as a party trick to get on TV, nor to be asked to use it for harm.  And, I wouldn't want to wind up assigned permanently to standing next to the President on the off-hand someone starts lobbing bullets at him.

Your Daily Dose of Good Cheer: Marie Windsor